Engineers, workers at Polavaram project set Guinness record

Amaravati: Setting a Guinness World record, engineers and workers at the Polavaram multipurpose project poured 32,315.5 cubic meters of concrete for the spillway in a 24-hour marathon effort that ended Monday. Representatives of the Guinness World Records, who witnessed the event, declared it a new world record and handed over the certificate to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu at a function at the project site this evening.

The concrete-filling marathon exercise, which Naidu termed a ‘historic moment’, was carried out for 24 hours at a stretch from 8 AM on Sunday. In the process, the record set by Dubai in May 2017 wherein 21,580 cubic meters of concrete was poured for the construction of the Al-Rashid tower was broken. Quoting the Guinness representatives, the Chief Minister said that two records, one for the most concrete poured continuously and the other for the largest concrete poured in 24 hours, were set on the occasion. “Massive projects were built in India and abroad, but this is a unique record. This is a historic moment which we may not witness again,” the Chief Minister said.

He, however, set a new target of pouring 65,000 cubic meters of concrete in 24 hours in March this year and hoped that the contractor, Navayuga Engineering Corporation, would accomplish it. The Chief Minister reiterated that Polavaram was the ‘lifeline of Andhra Pradesh’ and said it was the ‘project of the farmers’. He vowed to complete the project by the end of 2019 even while supplying water through gravity by June.

He demanded that the Centre immediately release all funds for Polavaram by accepting the Detailed Project Report-2. “This is an unprecedented project. No such project will be built in the country in future. We are building Polavaram to enhance the prestige of the country,” the chief minister said.